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An expectant mother who was raped and killed last year had turned to prostitution to make ends
meet and died after answering a Craigslist ad offering $200, a prosecutor said yesterday as he
pushed for the maximum sentence for her killer.

Deanna Ballman was in a difficult financial situation after moving home to central Ohio from
Colorado, separating from her husband and trying to support two young children while pregnant,
assistant Delaware County Prosecutor Kyle Rohrer said in a court filing.

Defendant Ali Salim, a former doctor, used Craigslist extensively to meet sexual partners, with
many references in his ads to exchanging drugs for sex, the filing said. Many of the women were
young, drug-addicted prostitutes, and several said they were drugged against their will and
sexually assaulted, the filing said.

Salim also wrote prescriptions for hard drugs for women with whom he had sexual relationships
and bought heroin that he gave women who visited his house in an upscale neighborhood.

A message was left for Salim’s attorney, Sam Shamansky, who previously alleged that Ballman was
a prostitute feeding a drug habit.

Ballman, 23, died of a fatal heroin overdose, but there is no evidence she was a drug user,
Rohrer said. She was found dead in the back seat of her car on a rural road a few miles from Salim’s
house the day after she met him. She was nine months’ pregnant; the child she had planned to name
Mabel also died.

Rohrer is pushing for a maximum sentence of 37 years at Salim’s sentencing on Dec. 20. Salim,
44, pleaded guilty to two counts of involuntary manslaughter in October; he was accused of
injecting Ballman with a fatal dose of heroin.

He also pleaded guilty to tampering with evidence and abuse of a corpse. He entered an Alford
plea to a charge of rape under which he maintains his innocence but acknowledges that prosecutors
had enough evidence to convict him.

Yesterday’s filing disputes Salim’s version of events on the day Ballman died, particularly his
claims that she was alive when she left the house and he drove her to a nearby parking lot and gave
her directions home. Salim said he walked home, according to the filing.

But investigators say video evidence shows Ballman nude and unconscious on Salim’s bed,
apparently suffering distress consistent with a heroin overdose, the filing said. She didn’t leave
the house alive, according to the filing, which said Salim left to get heroin in a neighboring
suburb that evening while Ballman was still in the house.

Salim “furnished and administered heroin to a young lady who was nine months pregnant, a young
lady who, by his own admission, declined even a glass of wine,” according to the filing.